


Hounds of the hills

by fresne



Category: Being Human, Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Changeling - Freeform, Hounds of Baskerville, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 09:36:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone who looks at Sherlock thinks Fae. That he does what he does through magic. Henry Knight certainly thinks it, and he's a cursed werewolf about to be hunted by black Yeth hounds upon the moors. John has his own opinions on the matter.</p><p>BBC's Sherlock "Hounds of Baskerville", remixed with ACD's "Hound of the Baskervilles", with magic and Midsummer Night's Dream thrown in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hounds of the hills

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: In as much as Midsummer Nights dream may be seen to have non-con relationships (i.e., Love-in-idleness is placed in lovers eyes and they fall in love outside of their own preferences), non-main character doggers on the hilltop are non-con.
> 
> Also mentions of Fae glamour (as in magic).
> 
>    
> The following inspiration for this work and inspiration for my dialogue, where I am not directly quoting, because apt quotes are cool:  
> William Shakespeare's, Midsummer Night's Dream
> 
> If you like my word building, writing whatever, and have read all the various fan/non-fannish things you care to in A03, but are still interested in more, you can check out my profile for links to novel length works under a less virtual name. Cheers!

A low buzz of tension hummed under John’s skin and though his muscles. Like touching an electrified fence? No, the better metaphor would be like the hour before a storm raked fingers across the back of the sky, and he was taking back that metaphor. Also, stopping that train of thought at the station. Anyway, he shifted in his chair.

It had always been like this for John at this time in the wheel of the year. He’d thought he’d grown out of it in Afghanistan. Samhain passed there in a long low howl of the wind without the rattle of falling leaves to mark the season. It had smelled different there. But now he was home and fall was in the air driving him from one end of the flat to the other.

He tried to sit at the table and type up their latest adventure. He got as far as, “The Adventure of Blue Peter?” No. “Lulu the elephant?” Funny, but Sherlock would say it had nothing to do with anything. “The Hornpipe of Doom.” Better. Sherlock would say it was too melodramatic. Sod Sherlock... scratch that thought completely out of existence and put it on the train with the previous metaphor. “The Adventure of Blue Peter” then.

He stood up. He looked out the window. But he was not Sherlock. He couldn't see anything other than the street was full of people doing people sort of things. He made himself sit at the table. He hit the return key. He hit backspace. He sighed. He went back to the window. He drank the milk that Mrs. Hudson had left for him. He washed the dishes and moved the jar of cursed gems to one (far) end of the counter. He tidied what he could. He even dusted the skull. He hadn’t been procrastinating. It needed to be done. He sat at the table. He hit the return key. He hit backspace. He sighed.

A sort of salvation came like it always did these days with fast steps up seventeen creaking stairs. Their flat’s door swung open (dramatically! melodramatically! histrionically!) to reveal Sherlock splattered in brilliant red blood. Not his blood. A quick look to be sure. It was definitely not Sherlock’s blood. Also, Sherlock had the spear of Longinus propped over one shoulder.

There were a number of things John could have said. “Were you sticking pigs with the spear of Christ?” being a key option.

What he said was, “You’ve been in the London Below.” Which he felt was a deduction right up there with, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Boring.” He tossed the spear into the clutter of sacred artifacts piled against the wall. Sherlock sneered at everything. “I need an adventure.”

“You just had an adventure.” John tried to be reasonable, but he could have used a trip to London Below. Blue Peter certainly wasn’t going anywhere.

Sherlock looked down at himself in distaste. Could that expression be described as catlike? John could see him licking himself clean? Quick darting pink licks of his tongue. Bit not good. He really needed to learn how to delete that sort of thought.

“You are wearing your adventure.” His voice came out unexpectedly harsh. He turned away and looked out the window. John would have felt disgruntled (was anyone ever gruntled?) about Sherlock’s solitary pig sticking activities, but he told himself that pig sticking adventures were something he could skip. Told himself and smiled with a shoulder weight of straighten up and carry on and pretended to believe it.

He didn’t think about anything while Sherlock showered and rubbed himself clean. He hit backspace. He hit return. He tapped his foot.

Sherlock emerged in his grey bored-now outfit with the blue silk robe that John did not want to touch to see if was really that soft. It fluttered as Sherlock quickly paced along John’s earlier pace line. “I need another adventure.” He glared at John as if expecting him to cause a basilisk to trot its way down Baker street. No, not interesting enough. Flying monkeys carrying basilisks flying over Marble Arch where they would proclaim the rise of the Flying Monkey and Basilisk empire. Would they perch on top of each other in a pyramid, hover or hop on boxes like the rest of the proclaimers?

John sighed and went to make some tea. It was something he could do.

He could have sworn that this took all of a minute to fill the kettle and put it on, but in the meantime, Sherlock had decided his cigarettes were hidden inside the Union Jack pillow. This was not to the Union Jack’s betterment.

Perhaps John shouldn’t have hidden empty cigarette boxes all over the flat. He was the one who would have to clean up after. But Sherlock had made him swear to help him once again quit smoking. Made John swear and then twisted his lips to say that John would never be able to hide anything from Sherlock. So, John hadn’t. Or rather, he had done a great deal of hiding. He’d always found it easier to hide a tree in a forest. It gave Sherlock something to do.

He drank his tea.

Fairly soon there was going to be a lot of cleaning and he wasn’t touching the artifact pile with a ten foot pole. There were things in that pile that didn’t bear thinking about.

The doorbell rang once and they looked at each other. Sherlock in the midst of disemboweling the sofa. John standing by the table. John felt his heart skip and the buzz below his skin turned up a level.

Sherlock reconstructed the sofa and flounced to a seat.

Their client trudged up the seventeen steps and came through the still (dramatically!) flung open door.

Sherlock took one look at their (hopefully) client. He said, “Werewolf. Beta. You’ll never rise in your pack if you don’t kick your addiction to Silver Leaf gum.” He peered over the top of his fingers. “No. Revise that. You don’t have a pack. You have a support group.” His eyes darted to John watching him be brilliant and then back again. “One inherited ghost. One court appointed vampire. The usual. You’re tediously involved.”

The man blinked. “How did you?” He visibly stopped himself. He stared at Sherlock in all his Sherlockness. “Never mind.” John watched him think what everyone thought. Pale skin and pale sharp eyes and sharp cheeks to bleed on. He thought Sherlock was doing it through magic. That Sherlock must be a changeling or the descendant of some Fae’s wandering eye.

Sherlock sneered and got up to poke out the non-existent eyes of the mantle skull.

John sat down in his chair and pulled out his notebook as boring as an ordinary mundane man could be. He pulled on a smile like a knit jumper. He liked that metaphor. He wrote it down. “Why don’t you tell us about your problem.”

The man, eventually introduced as Henry Knight, said, “Um, my family is cursed.” His eyes darted up, but Sherlock was still ignoring him. “Centuries ago, one of my ancestors, Hugo Baskerville, fell in love at first sight with the blacksmith’s daughter.” John tried to look interested, but this was shaping up to be one of those undead lovelorn conversations that Sherlock did not do. “He kidnapped her, but she escaped.” Henry hiccuped a quick laugh. “He sold his soul to the Devil to become a werewolf so he could hunt her down.”

John sighed, because they really could have used a case. “Homo Sapiens-Sapiens-Lupus are recognized as a separate sub-species under the Act of,”

“That’s not the curse part!” A sharper set of words than Henry looked capable of. Henry swallowed. Looked at Sherlock ignoring him. “He became a werewolf, but the price was that he would be hunted by the black Yeth dogs that roam the moor and every generation they come back.” He rubbed his face. “Twenty years ago, a black Yeth dog killed my father while we were night hiking across the Devil’s seat. He’d always said that the story was a myth.” John wondered if it was polite to ask if they’d been in wolf form at the time? Sherlock probably already had calculated the phases of the moon twenty years ago.

“I thought it was just, I thought it was a coincidence. There are Yeth dogs in Dartmoor. Everyone knows that. I didn’t think the curse was true.” Another high laugh from Henry, “But for weeks, I’ve been hearing the baying of the Hounds of Baskerville across Wistman’s Wood.” John shifted in his seat, buzzing with a desire to do something. Anything. He could practically hear the belling of the hounds across a tangled oak green.

Sherlock glanced at Henry in (understandable) disbelief. “Since the normal course of action would be to lock the front door, move, or, as a werewolf, eat them, what changed last night?” He tinkered with some test tubes. John hoped they were nothing corrosive in them.

Henry swallowed. “How did you know? Ha, well, of course you would. Um, well, last night, well, it will be twenty years today and even though it’s a waning moon, I started to change. I couldn’t control it, and I’m not.” He hunched forward. “I have a support group and I’m not like that. I, I need your help. Could you, can you help me?”

Sherlock rattled some more test tubes. “Dull. I’m busy. I have a blackmail case. It’s very delicate. I can’t leave.” He didn’t look up from his rattling. “But you can go now.”

This was probably a very bad idea. A very, very bad idea. But the man was in trouble, pathetic werewolf that he was. Sherlock didn’t have a case and John wasn’t sitting in their flat not writing anything. The longing to run hummed under his skin. John said, “We’ll look into it. While Sherlock is on his case,” he glared at Sherlock, “I’ll come out to see you. Look around for clues.” Sherlock was watching him. John certainly didn’t have a metaphor for that look. In that moment, he didn’t care.

As soon as Henry thanked him three dozen times and left, John said, “You don’t have a case.”

“Ha. I wouldn’t have a case if I went.” Sherlock started doing something with a pile of teeth. “The man is delusional. Werewolves can change out of season if properly incentivized.”

John knew that. He had a medical degree. But Sherlock watched him like (microscope? criminal? case? puzzle? alien?) something. He escaped upstairs to pack, which took five minutes and then there was nothing to do. He looked up bus schedules onto the moor. He called to verify the Sunday schedule. He researched phases of the moon. It hadn’t been a full moon twenty years ago.

He failed to read his book. He put on his favorite jumper, the brown comfortable one that had been hand knitted in Galway. It didn’t really help. He took it off. He went to bed, but he was just as restless there. He spent hours staring at the ceiling in the dark.

Tea. He needed to apply tea to this problem. He crept down the stairs, his left leg ached. The old not-wound. It was psychosomatic, but not from the war. His sister had always claimed that when they were little, they’d been playing pirates and that he’d fallen on a letter opener. There had never been an injury and was no scar and his sister had problems. Clearly he had problems. He had a recurring psychosomatic limp from childhood. He was saving that story to use on Sherlock when Sherlock was being completely impossible about knowing everything. More completely impossible.

Of course, as he came down the stairs, he found Sherlock sitting in John’s chair plucking discord on his violin. John didn’t say anything. He made two cups of tea. Sherlock stopped his plucking and switched to something wild. It probably had the sort of name like, “Violin Sonata 4 in E”, but in his head John named it, “The Wild Western Wind” and let the tea cup cool between his fingers as the melody carried him away.

As the last note faded, John put down his cup and made five quick claps with his hands. “That was amazing.”

Sherlock dangled the violin carelessly under his chin. He glowed and puffed up in that scoffing I don’t care (really do care) that you think I’m brilliant way of his. He waved the bow like some sort of wand at John. Close enough to touch and grab and pull him in. Not that he did. Not that he was thinking of it. Sherlock said, “You think so?” The flick of his eyes invited further compliments.

John picked up his cup. “You know you’re brilliant.” He raised his eyebrows. “Practically magic.” He swallowed his tea to keep any other words back.

Sherlock said, “Hmmm,” and played a soft melody that carried John upstairs into sleep.

Of course, in the morning, Sherlock was no where to be found. John went alone to Paddington. He dozed a little on the swaying ride. It was one of those persistent into half waking dreams in which he ran through tangled woods looking for something he’d lost. It left him feeling unsettled. He shook himself awake and made himself blink at the passing scenery. He’d never been to the West Country. Well, once with his parents to one of those caravan parks by the sea, but he didn’t remember it, so it didn’t count. Sherlock probably remembered every vacation he’d ever been on. If he went on vacation. If he was ever a boy and hadn’t come into the world Sherlock sized. But no. Everyone else might think Sherlock was Fae, but John didn’t believe it for a minute. The man was too much of a prat to be anything but human.

As the train rattled down the track and he got closer to where he was going, John told himself it would be fine. Just fine. Just a pack of black Yeth dogs. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to explain the feeling of unease. That was just the dream. That was just that he was restless this time of year, which was common in thirty percent of the population. Admittedly a fact from the Daily Mail and not Med school.

As the train pulled into Exeter, Sherlock draped himself over the back of the opposite seat. “Aren’t you ready yet?”

John chuckled despite (despite? it wasn’t spiteful.) himself. Sherlock’s fingers brushed his elbow as he stood up and he felt the warmth of that touch run through him. It made him think of the wild west wind rushing over him in the night.

The man at the car hire in Exeter (bus was not in Sherlock’s vocabulary) took one look at them and smiled that same quick smile they all did. His crinkle smile said poor sod. John was some poor human under Sherlock’s glamour pulled along in his wake. About to drive out to his own doom. Be sucked into the grimpen. Be lost under some stony Tor to turn to dust, which made the man a bit of a berk, because there were anti-glamour sigils twisting and spinning all over the room.

John sighed a short sharp huff of breath. He’d stopped protesting months ago. While the man rang them up, John looked at Sherlock, who glared at the tread marks on the cheery red mat in front of the door. He considered asking what the marks told Sherlock, but he didn’t. He stepped around the mat to open the door. That way the merry jingle guaranteed to grate on Fae ears wouldn’t play over the loudspeakers.

Sherlock flashed a smile and jumped out the door in a swish of great coat drama. He plucked the hire papers from John’s hands before John could do more than step carefully out the door. John crinkled his own smile and he followed his whirlwind. Sherlock didn’t even ask. He sat in the driver’s seat because he was a control freak with keys. John did his own not asking and got in the passenger seat.

They drove out onto the moors. Which was to say, Sherlock drove, which was to say they stopped every kilometer or two to look at something that caught Sherlock’s eye. Standing stone. Stone post bridge that had been a former hiding place for trolls. A herd of wild moor ponies. The stallion put on a bit of a show with one of the mares. John wasn’t so much looking away as looking at other scenery and not at Sherlock. Another standing stone. Site of an unsolved murder from 1902.

“Kind of a cold case don’t you think?” said John, but he was in no hurry to get anywhere. Three texts and Sherlock solved it. Since the murderer had died in 1930, it hardly mattered. Watching Sherlock glow in his element, John shook his head. “If you’d been born two centuries ago, they’d have burned you as a witch.”

Sherlock tapped a few more keys and shot John a look as if to say, “It’s highly unlikely that you’d have let that happen,” and he brushed by John on his way back to the car.

John shook his head again (always) and quickly defaced the historical marker with the name of the murderer. He documented. It was the least he could do.

Sherlock drove down increasingly tiny hedge lined roads. John idly noticed the bluebells that brushed along the sides of the car as they went, but he didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. They were flowers. It was the wrong time of year for bluebells. But it was fine. It was all fine.

They arrived at the Cross Keys without incident. Definitely all fine. He climbed out of the car and Sherlock was off. There was a horseshoe over the door for luck. John didn’t touch it as he went inside. But then again, neither did Sherlock.

John checked them in, because, of course, Sherlock was too busy examining centuries of wear on the stairs. The innkeeper laughed and chuckled at them and offered up a single room with a view of the garden. John took it. He’d be lucky if either of them got any sleep. He spotted a receipt for a meat order from a local butcher’s shop. He snatched it up while the innkeeper was fiddling with his books. John might not be Sherlock, but that was an awful lot of offal for a pub that specialized in local veg.

When they went upstairs, he also found the San Graal stuffed with Sherlock’s socks and pants in his duffel. He sighed, because he had no idea how Sherlock thought that would help with Yeth dogs. He didn’t bother to unpack.

He handed the receipt to Sherlock, who crumpled it up. “Idiots.” He paused. “No, wait, they’re morons.” His eyes slid over everything in their room, resting briefly on John. “The types of crystals in the lamps. The pattern in the wallpaper. The innkeeper’s posture indicating hours with a computer. He and his lover moved here to be closer to the Fae. They’re leaving offerings to the *good folk* so they can be inspired. He’s a writer. His lover, the cook, wants a Michelin star.”

This time it was John, who snorted. He didn’t say, “Idiots.” He didn’t say, “Morons.” His eyes met Sherlock’s and Sherlock’s expression said it for him. He broke eye contact first and examined the stack of books on the small shelf. “Muse: the Inspiration of Fae Love.” “Men who Run with Changelings.” “Fae and Fabulous Genius.” They weren’t actually that interesting. Mostly cringe making. It was something to look at. Not one of Sherlock’s harder deductions.

They drove out to the Devil’s Seat. The Devil did not make an appearance. Sherlock did stand on top of the nearby tor (strikingly! vividly! Sherlockly!) and took in whatever it was that he saw. John saw a pile of granite rocks next to a marsh. John, of course, was the one who stepped in the mud puddle, cold water oozing into his shoes. He wondered how Sherlock avoided getting dirty (unless there was blood.) wherever they went.

They met Henry back at the Crossed Keys and for some reason the best plan (why did Sherlock’s plans always involve running across the landscape at night?) was to use Henry as bait for the Yeth hounds.

His feet were wet and there was a holy artifact in his duffel. John put on a warmer jumper. The one with the hand knitted shapes that always made himself feel like he was being held inside by soft rumpled design. John squelched behind Sherlock and Henry in the dark. He had his Glock loaded with cast silver and lead bullets. It’s polymer frame a steady weight at his back. Not that that would do much good if a troll tried to eat them. Still, it was good to have. He scanned the dark tree line with his torch, but there wasn’t much to see. What with the plan being to run around the moors in the pitch dark.

Then he saw them. Willow wisps. Fairy lights twinkled from up on the hill. He stared at them and he felt like he should understand the message that they twinkled, but it made no sense. It wasn’t Morse code. They weren’t making patterns. He turned back and, of course, Sherlock and Henry were nowhere to be seen. His heart squeezed and his skin buzzed.

He ran down the path, hardly looking for roots, much less trolls (foolish! reckless! Sherlock!). He found them in the misty fold of the Devil’s Seat. Henry growled and curled in on himself, halfway to a wolf already. Sherlock spun in a circle, his eyes wide and wild.

John reached out. He touched Sherlock’s wrist and felt the hard bones. He felt the thrum of Sherlock’s pulse. The need for flight or fight struggling with each beat of his heart. Sherlock looked down at him and blinked. Blind. Unfocused. Dull. Hardly knew him (no. just no.)

John took them out of that place. They walked to the car and somehow Sherlock pulled himself together enough to drive them up the winding road to Henry’s (National Trust? definitely) home (Victorian monstrosity meant to look like a medieval castle). The ghost, Annie, met them in the main hall. She said, “Oh, dear. I’ll get Mitchell.” She flickered out.

Since it was the sort of house that had brandy in cut crystal decanters, John applied brandy heavily in equally heavy glasses. Sherlock took his with shaking hands. John wanted to reach out and (no. no he didn’t.) do something. He refilled Sherlock’s glass, while Henry curled behind the sofa.

Mitchell, a vampire, an easy deduction what with the bloodless skin and opaque eyes, opened a door meant to look like a bookshelf and brooded into the room. It would have had a greater affect if he hadn’t had a tracking anklet on one leg, but it wasn’t as if the authorities let vampires roam at will. Still he did his best to be impressive. It wasn’t the vampire’s fault that John was used to Sherlock.

Mitchell said, “You were supposed to stop this.” He scooped up Henry and carried him off somewhere followed by Annie, who streamed a flood of advice.

John stood there awkwardly with the brandy glass still in his hand. Found he really didn’t care if there was about to be a three-way-three-species upstairs. He wasn’t even sure how that would work.

He sat down opposite Sherlock. “Sherlock?” It was a question. Of course, it was a question. John couldn’t look at a man and know what he felt. Not by looking.

Sherlock held out his trembling hands. Words came then in a flood of fear and anger and dogs that weren’t there or were there.

It was when Sherlock said, “We’re not friends,” that John left. He didn’t remember doing it. But suddenly, he wasn’t there. He was on the hill below the flickering lights. He blinked to himself, because he couldn’t remember running there, but he could still hear Sherlock’s words and this wasn’t the first time he’d left. Half the time that he’d ended up at some girlfriend or another, he’d come to himself knocking on their doors with a half smile and a (failed) determination not to rant about Sherlock.

Since he was there, he trudged up the hill on still damp feet to see what the lights were saying. What he found were cars filled with couples coupling, dogging, but no black dogs. A man lifted his head inside a car at the flash of his torch. 

John sniffed the air and found it sweet. Flower sweet like spring at odds with the smell of falling leaves.

Someone giggled in the dark and slid off the hood of one of the cars. The man that grinned at him wore his own face.

John sighed and pointed his gun at not himself.

It said something abut John’s life that this wasn’t even the first doppelganger that he’d ever seen. He wasn’t even the fifth.

Three months after he moved in with Sherlock there had been “The Adventure of the Skinwalker”, which was what it sounded like on the tin. “The Looking Glass Adventure”, where Sherlock had jumped down a rabbit hole and for some reason John thought it was a good idea to follow him. “A Case of the Identity of the Creepy Step-Father Who Pulled His Step Daughter at a Wool Jumper Convention While Pretending to be Bachelor Doctor John Watson and then I Hit Him in the Face.” John might have been drunk when he wrote that one up. “The Curious Incident of the Non-Barking Mechanical Dog in the Night”, which made a lot more sense if you took into account that John had actually been turned into a dog at the time.

This him wasn’t even phased by the gun. He tapped a red stoppered bottle against his chin as he grinned with all his teeth and giggled. “I’m like you.”

John shifted. “Look like me, but I can’t always believe what I see,” which for some reason set other John off in a machine gun rattle of laughter.

“I’m like you and you’re like them.” The other him spread wide his arms. “They’ll laugh when they see what I’ve done.”

“And what is it that you’ve done?” John smiled his I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-talking-about smile, which he got to use all too often. He itched to do something, but shooting himself in the face was not how he wanted to spend his evening.

“They’ll laugh and I’ll be one of them. Doing what they do. It’s only logical.” He huffed a sharp breath that steamed in the light of John’s torch. “How can you even stand it here?” He thumbed the cork out of the bottle and tossed it at John, who didn’t shoot other him. Who caught it one handed. He flinched as the contents splashed on his chest and hands. The other him ran up the hill into the dark.

John chased after him, but the other him ducked through a holed stone and disappeared. John wasn’t so foolish as to jump after him. “Right.” He nodded. Shined his torch at the dark.

His heart pounded in his chest. He swallowed. He recognized the oil splashed over him. Patients dosed with diluted forms of it came into any ER with depressing regularity. Love-in-idleness which made lovers out of the first thing that a person looked upon. Love at first sight. There was something else niggling at his memory that joined the prickles for the things he couldn’t see in the dark.

The oil warm and slick on his hands and soaked into his jumper was not diluted. Fortunately, none of it had splashed in his eyes, but that just made his eyes itch. He gritted his teeth and did not rub his eyes.

He flashed his light over the hill, but found only cars full of whispered conversations and soft cries. John texted Sherlock, who didn’t reply.

John called 999 and had to explain that he was not reporting public indecency. He waited at the crime scene. He gave his statement three times to the worried looking officers and paramedics as they gently washed love out of the lover’s eyes. They put his jumper and his shirt in a hazmat box and gave him a shock blanket. As he got a ride back to the village, he wondered if he should start a collection of blankets.

He climbed the stairs of the inn, feeling ordinary and average and more than a little sick.

In their room, Sherlock was sipping quietly (quietly? he was never quiet, even when he was in a fugue, his mind hummed) from the San Graal. He glanced up as John came in.

John said, “I’m,” and Sherlock said, “It’s.”

They stopped. John almost told Sherlock about the other John and the not-lovers on the hill, but the words struggled with the dull sick smell of flowers that still clung to his skin.

Sherlock put down the San Graal with a heavy thunk on the side table and came over to him. He wrapped his fingers around John’s wrists, leaned down and breathed in. John wanted to pull away from Sherlock, from his warm hands. From the hot rush of his breath on the slick oil that felt burned into his skin. From heat spreading out from that spot. Although, Love-in-idleness didn’t work that way. It was eyes only. A laugh bubbled up from somewhere inside him (bubbles through mud in a marsh rather than champagne) and popped from his throat. Far away in the distance, he could hear the belling of hounds.

“Quiet.” Sherlock whispered into his hands. “Stop thinking stupid thoughts. You aren’t usually this stupid.”

Strangely, that worked. John’s thoughts rerouted back to Sherlock holding his hands inside his own. Sherlock loomed over him. He brushed his thumb along the bones of John’s wrist. John made himself recite them: Trapezium, Trapezoid, Capitate, Hamate, Scaphoid, Lunate (this was insane and Sherlock hadn’t yet let go and he didn’t want him to) and outside he could hear the hounds.

Sherlock grinned at him with his wide pale eyes. “Coming?” and squeezed before letting go.

John nodded, slowly, as if his head were almost rusted to his neck. Sherlock’s hand brushed his elbow once as he swept out through the door. The warmth that lingered like the band of heat around his wrists.

He followed Sherlock into the night, because that’s what he did. He realized two minutes into the drive that he was still clutching the shock blanket, because he didn’t have a shirt on. He told himself that it didn’t matter. At least he had shoes.

They drove back to the Victorian monstrosity where the vampire brooded at a gaping window shattered from the inside. The ghost flickered helplessly in the breeze. She said, “He left. We were together, and he changed. He’s never changed outside of the full of the moon before. He changed and he left.”

The vampire spun his ankle bracelet around and around, as if he could wear it away. He didn’t look up. He said, “You’ll bring him back to us, won’t you? You’ll find out what’s happening.” He spun the thing around another rotation. He looked at them with his milky eyes and there should have been some sort of compulsion in it, but John was feeling compulsed out.

Sherlock wasn’t even looking at them. His eyes were flicking through the air. Picking and discarding thoughts. John could see it in his shoulders when the pieces fell into place. He wished the pieces would fall into place for him.

Sherlock looked at him. Looked at him like a clue. Like a dead brilliant toe in the refrigerator. Like Yule. He grinned.

John shook himself. He blinked. He said, “Explain for the rest of us, Sherlock.”

Sherlock tilted his head. His eyes flicked over the vampire and the ghost and the worn spot on the carpet before the fire. He said, “It’s a new moon and yet a werewolf has turned out of his cycle to run in the hills where the Yeth hounds are calling. Where Hugo Baskerville once made a deal with the Devil.” Sherlock gave John a quick sharp look at that. “There’s a mist that causes terror and there’s oil that makes strangers fall in love. It’s obvious. Think, John.”

John didn’t want to think. He wanted to run.

Sherlock sighed. “Fine. Don’t think. No one ever does.” He framed John’s face in his warm hands, strange calluses on his cheeks and kissed him. He heard the vampire say, “What?” and the ghost say, “Eeep!” and Sherlock’s lips on his lips and his tongue was tasting something and exploring and learning. Sherlock’s hands on his shoulders. Cold air on his skin and the scar on his shoulder burned. Burned with cold iron aching in his flesh and high in the hills, the Yeth hounds called.

Sherlock pulled away with a slow slide, but held onto John’s hand.

John stood there in an ugly not-medieval room, his heart pounding and his head full of impulses. Sherlock said, “Well?” It was a question and John had no idea what he was asking. He felt the beat of his heart under his skin and he wanted nothing more than to run. Sherlock said, “Go.”

John went and for once Sherlock followed. Because he’d remembered what the other things Love-in-idleness did. It opened eyes. It opened hearts. It opened doors between the worlds if you had the lovers to fuel the opening.

Out into the moors. Over the old post bridge where a Troll once ate men and on the far side, the stone ring outlined in yellow police tape. He jumped over the tape and ran through the stone ring to the other side.

There, the moon was full, which was nonsense, but he was used to that. He ran over the mound on the hill to the Wistman’s wood where the hounds belled and the horses galloped.

The Wild Hunt raced by. First came the trapped kings on their weary horses, clutching dogs and foxes next to their dusty faces. Then came the bards with their lyres and mad delirious smiles. Then the lords of the Fae all green and brown and laughing. They were all laughing. There by the thicket was an immense werewolf trapped by close grown trees on one side and a snarling pack of shadow born Yeth hounds with wide white teeth and red carbuncle eyes.

Titania (who else with that autumn leaf hair and sky eyes) on her white burning horse laughed like lightening. She let go of a drawn arrow on her silver bow. The arrow should have struck, but at the last minute the werewolf leapt and twisted through the thicket.

Oberon (who else with that crown of stags horns) laughed like the mountains and the forest that once covered the land and blew upon a curved horn. The Yeth hounds scrambled through the twisted oaks after the werewolf (Henry, that was Henry Knight, with his thin face and sad eyes. It was hard to remember anything in that moment. He clung to thoughts like Sherlock’s hand warm in his.)

Titania waved her hand to a riderless horse. She said, “My child, have you come at last to join us on our ride?”

Oberon quieted his restless horse. He said, “My son, come join our hunt.” It was not a question.

John didn’t look at Sherlock, who in any case didn’t move.

John took a step forward. One step. Only one. Felt the tug on his hand as Sherlock stayed where he was. As he said, “John will not be joining you.”

It was then that he noticed, it was then that he observed the other him riding next to Titania. The other him glared with eyes that had only ever looked upon the green and grey and never yellow desert sands at all. The other him said, “Did you like my trick with the oil? It means I’m just like them. They all laughed when I told them.” He moved his horse closer to Titania, who ruffled his hair woven with oak leaves.

John could have told the other him, the real John he supposed, "You have a sister. An alcoholic, who cheated on her wife and apparently stabbed me over twenty years ago while playing pirates."

He could have said that. Instead he looked at Sherlock, who jerked his chin up until it brushed against the edges of his ridiculously, dramatically, Sherlockly turned up collar. Sherlock who wasn't Fae and who didn't look like a vampire, not really. Sherlock, who'd once winked at John, but was hardly blinking at all now with his eyes that saw everything.

He cleared his throat, because it felt like he should say something as he stood there shirtless and not at all cold in the evening. “Um, what he said. Um. Sorry. Thank you, though.” He could have said more about hunts and hunting and already having one madman to follow.

Oberon’s eyes flashed and said as deep as the earth, “In ten years, we will meet again and then you will join us on our ride.”

Sherlock said, “Boring.” That’s what he said. His tone and expression were, “Not happening.”

Oberon laughed like the after flash of a summer storm (autumn? storm?).

The lords and ladies of the Fae laughed. The humans with dusty old clothes and drawn faces were silent. The bards babbled to themselves. The other him turned away and whispered to a laughing Fae lady, who galloped her horse over a tree top and the other him followed. The court, one by one, resumed the chase.

Oberon didn’t say anything. He blew on the horn and rode away over the tree tops.

John called after Titania. “What about Henry?”

Titania’s drifted back on a breeze. “You know the rules, my love, the first to catch and keep him has him.”

They were alone then in the tangled wood.

John shivered. “We’ll never catch up before they catch him again.”

Sherlock’s squeezed his hand briefly and let go. “We don’t have to catch up with them. We just have to be cleverer. Which fortunately won’t be hard.” He turned John to face him. He held between two fingers a stick of gum laced with wolfcall. He slid it between John’s lips with a ghost of touch on John’s mouth.

He chewed two bites without thinking. “Why am I the one chewing?”

Sherlock looked down at him, his face cast dark in the shadow of the moonlight. “Because I’m no changeling to cast my breath to the wind.” He spun John around so his back was to him. His voice a low rumble in John’s ear. “Breathe out.” His right hand pressed against John’s chest, pressed John against him, and John exhaled. His breath curled on the breeze and away. Far away, there was a howl. A crash in the thicket. Sherlock let go. “Now we should run.”

They ran (always running them). The washed out landscape flickered by them. Twisted oaks and mossy rocks. Strange in color in the moonlight. The crashing growls got closer, as did the sound of the hounds. John reached back for Sherlock’s hand and went faster yet. They weren’t so much fast as the wind, as they were fast as the earth spinning around the sun. Heliocentric, useful that.

They tumbled back though the stone circle as the werewolf jumped after them, his mouth wide and breathe foul. Sherlock splashed something on him (water? oil? who knew? Sherlock) and Henry was a man again, small and naked and cold on the stony ground.

John was suddenly aware of his own lack of warmth. He found himself looking back through the stone circle. Something laughed high and sweet and the sound of the horn faded into the distance.

He helped Henry to his feet and looked at Sherlock. “Did you bring me out here deliberately? Did you know that would happen?”

Sherlock huffed. “I’m not the one who took the case. In fact, this is your adventure. You can take your client back to his home.” And the prat whirled off leaving the half and completely naked person to hike back across the hills, which was somehow a longer trip now that the adventure was done.

John and Henry made awkward conversation about the weather and the history of Henry’s home. It was a long walk, but when they got there Henry gave him coffee and a shirt and they watched the sun rise.

John got a ride back to the inn, where unsurprisingly he hadn’t slept a wink, but checkout wasn’t until noon and there was a bed and he was tired and dirty and Sherlock was sitting by the garden facing window when he got there.

Sherlock stood up and looked at him like (a puzzle? a case? a problem?) something. “That shirt doesn’t suit you. Take it off.”

John decided a glare of disbelief was the way to go and opted for the shower. He put the bathroom door between them. He undressed in sharp angry tugs at his clothes. Stepped into the old tub and put a shower curtain decorated with pixies between them too. He turned his face up to hot falling water from a spout that looked like Tinkerbell. He closed his eyes against it. The door opened. “I’m not in the mood, Sherlock.”

The shower curtain was pulled back. Sherlock fully dressed in his suit (armor) glared at him. “Is this a glamour?”

There was free hotel shampoo in John’s hair and he smelled like lavender and he was naked and he glared back. “What are you on about? Clearly, I’m the least self aware changeling in the history of changelings.” He put his hands on his hips. It was somewhere to put them. “At least I didn’t think you were a changeling.”

Sherlock said, “Idiot,” and kissed him with bruising teeth and hands and yes a wash cloth that was not that surreptitiously rubbed at both their eyes. John decided that was fine and worked at getting Sherlock’s suit wet and then off.

They tumbled back out of the shower in a trail of Sherlock’s clothes. Tumbled onto the bed wet and soap slick. John didn’t care. He whispered, “Deduce me.”

Sherlock did. His voice was nothing like thunder or rain or forests; a man’s voice thrumming against his skin. “You cannot drive a car.” Eyes that were nothing like rain or sky, but were brilliantly human examined him. “You have a recurring psychosomatic limp,” Sherlock’s fingers slid down John’s thigh, “where you were stabbed with something iron in your leg.” His fingers slid along the meat of his calf where the wound still sometimes ghost ached. “You think you should have a scar, but you don’t.” Fingers trailed his legs and then back again as Sherlock explored. “Cold iron in your shoulder.” Fingers traced the tumble of his wound. “You carry a polymer gun with silver, lead, or brass bullets.”

John arched his back the better to touch Sherlock with all of himself. “The silver could have been for the werewolf.”

He was rewarded with a, “Please, every time,” and nipped at his unscarred shoulder. John groaned and reached up to thread fingers through hair that was nothing like a leaf tangled Fae lord. “You clean our flat, tidy my experiments, but you won’t touch the holy artifacts.” Sherlock slid up his body up John’s, slick and wet. “You even drink the milk Mrs. Hudson leaves out for the brownie she thinks cleans our flat.” That laugh was a half laugh and Sherlock played an unheard melody on John’s ribs. They grappled. Scrabbled. Skin desperate for the touch of skin and it was wonderful.

He crawled on top of Sherlock and whispered. “Wonderful.”

Found himself flipped and pinned to the bed. “Tell me if this is glamour.”

John laughed helplessly. “You tell me.” Sherlock snarled against his lips. John decided (hell with it?) and ran his hands through in his soapy hair. Reached down and slicked Sherlock’s cock slippery with soap. “Tell me.”

Sherlock’s breath stuttered. He curled his body around John. He hid his face in John’s neck as John stroked the words out of him. “I’m often brilliant and now I’m always shining.” He licked his way down John’s neck. “I was average with the violin and you look at me and I play and I write you sonatas.” He whispered into John’s shoulder, “You’re a conductor of light.” His hand found a matching rhythm around John’s cock and they groaned together. “I’m more brilliant than I’ve ever been when I’m with you.” His hand moved faster, matching John’s rhythm. “So, I want to be with you.” He bit down again, this time into John’s scar and it ached and his skin hummed. “I don’t want to be with anyone. And I want more.”

John whispered, “So, be with me.” It seemed like a good idea to spread his legs and try (try being the optimal word since neither of them had a clue what they were doing) to guide Sherlock into him. Hip and pelvic bones and flesh got in the way and their bodies thumped and it hurt, but the hum under his skin said closer, closer, closer and John went with instinct, which made the world go round. So, they moved against each other on the bed. Wet bodies that slid as Sherlock whispered deductions about John into John’s skin and he felt each one like a tattoo.

They came together not with a shout or thunder, but almost silently, Sherlock’s face buried in a pattern of bruises and John’s scar. As their skin cooled, John tugged Sherlock’s hand. “Come on then. Let’s get cleaned up.”

Sherlock followed him and sat on the edge of the old tub. John washed him carefully. He kissed each far seeing eye in turn as Sherlock shuddered against him.

When Sherlock opened his eyes, John brushed back his hair the better to see him. “Ready?”

Sherlock leaned into his touch. “I want to understand everything.”

John kissed his forehead. “Which makes you the most human of us all.”

Sherlock, who would want the last word on Judgment day, said, “Hmmm... I don’t have friends. There’s just you.” He helped John into John’s own nubbed and woven clothes that held him in. John helped Sherlock dress in his suit and coat.

Outside in the garden, it was raining toads. Sherlock breathed in, with hardly a glance over his shoulder to be sure John was following (of course, he was following), he ran out to investigate.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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